Shoot Your Mouth Off
by Jukebox Hound
Summary: [NaruSasu. Post timeskip.] How Naruto wondered about Sasuke’s sex life, how Sasuke figured out he might have manfeelings for Naruto, and then how Sasuke kicked Naruto in the face. Again.
1. Chapter 1

**Pairing**: NaruSasu  
**Summary**: (Post time-skip, humor) How Naruto wondered about Sasuke's sex life, how Sasuke figured out he might have manfeelings for Naruto, and then how Sasuke kicked Naruto in the face. Again.

Because I was tired of reading overly angsty crises about Sasuke's sexual identity.

* * *

**Shoot Your Mouth Off**_**  
Hades' Phoenix**_

Sex wasn't a foreign concept to Sasuke. It couldn't be, after having lived with Orochimaru and his less-than-subtle innuendo for almost three years, and especially for living in a world ruled by blood and death. When betrayal and distrust become the order of the day, shinobi tend to grab at the remainders of their humanity without much more than a passing thought for taboo.

"Do you even _have_ a dick?" Naruto demanded one day, when the newly reunited Team Seven had decided to have their we-finished-a-mission-and-no-one-died-that-wasn't-supposed-to celebration at Ichiraku's. Or rather, Naruto had decided and dragged his two teammates to the ramen stall with Kakashi trailing along as a porn-bearing shadow of amusement.

Sasuke gave Naruto a long look that questioned his intelligence, his ancestry, and the blond's own manhood, all without words. A lesser man—or one with more common sense—might have shit himself, but Naruto just waved his chopsticks around haphazardly and nearly smacked the other boy in the face.

"I mean, you go all snakey-doomon us and leave, but you _still_ have girls hanging off of you and you _still_ don't take advantage of it. What the hell, bastard? Are you broken down there or something?"

Sitting on the other side of Naruto, Sakura was torn between outrage and laughing her ass off. Sasuke could have sworn he heard a sound suspiciously like a chuckle emanating from the erotica book next to him, and his eyes narrowed into dangerous slits as he ruminated over all the ways he'd learned to kill with just a finger. Naruto leaned close enough that his nose nearly squished Sasuke's, and Sasuke suddenly made it a matter of pride not to move away from the violation of his five-meter personal bubble. Because that would've suggested Naruto was getting under his skin, and that was _not _true. At all. Period.

(Typically Sasuke was able to ignore the things he disliked with the sort of contempt only a spoiled, aristocratic little asshole could manage, but naturally Naruto had to ruin even that.)

"Are you _sure_ you're a guy?"

A boot in his face sent Naruto flying into the dusty road behind them, scattering some of the barely pubescent females that had been watching Team Seven and giggling behind their hands.

"_Ow_, you _bastard!_"

Sasuke calmly turned his back to the road and sipped his tea.

Naruto clambered back to his own stool, muttering darkly under his breath and taking a deep draught from his ramen bowl. Sakura was poorly trying to repress her own snickers, but otherwise the stall returned to its normal late-afternoon peace.

"So if it's not broken," Naruto said suddenly, and Sasuke resisted the urge to bash his own head into the counter, "then is it, like, _really small_ or something? Are you embarrassed?"

"Inexperience is not something to be ashamed of," Kakashi commented lightly, not looking up.

"Aw, is Sasuke-chan _shy_?" Naruto drawled girlishly, batting his eyelashes, and through his own killing intent slowly filling the stall Sasuke realized the idiot was doing one of the best impressions of a girl that he'd ever seen.

It disturbed him.

"…Go die in a fire."

"Well, geez, with that attitude, no wonder you're not getting laid." Naruto paused for a moment, then turned to Sakura. "Ne, ne, Sakura-chan, what is it with girls and the whole brooding-angsty-asshole thing?"

She blinked, first at Naruto, then at Sasuke, who was staring at his tea and imagining the slow painful deaths of loud blond teammates. She was inordinately glad that she'd finally gotten over her unhealthy crush. "You know, I have no idea."

"I mean, most girls say they want someone sensitive with a sense of humor, right? I think Sasuke just kicks puppies. _Ow!_" He hunkered down defensively when Sakura raised her fist again, her eyes flashing.

The only animal Sasuke had any intention of kicking was a fox—preferably the one sitting next to him. _Next to him_, as in, _in his personal bubble._

"If you're so frustrated, go out and just fucking buy a girl," Sasuke snapped. "Otherwise shut the fuck up."

"What makes you think I'm frustrated?" Naruto demanded hotly and the other boy's lips twisted into a sneer.

"The fact that you're obsessing over _my_ sex life."

"Or lack thereof," Kakashi chimed in helpfully. He went ignored.

"Just wondering if you ever get that stick out of your ass," Naruto growled, something dark and mischievous flashing in his eyes, "or is it just making room for something else?"

He ducked a vicious upper-hand cut that would have crushed his windpipe just as Sakura screeched a scandalized, _"Naruto!"_

"Idiot!"

"Bastard!"

Kakashi's single eye lazily watched the two almost-adults wreak havoc in the street, upsetting civilians and not a few shopping bags. It appeared that Sasuke was attempting to shove his chokutō down Naruto's throat while the blond countered with a taunting and malicious Sexy no Jutsu. Like waving a red banner in front of a bull, it only seemed to piss off the brunet even more. Kakashi blinked slowly and wondered if perhaps Naruto latest accusations had a point, before deciding that any serious consideration of his own students' sex lives was a bit much even for him and he promptly dismissed the thought.

"They're never going to grow up, are they?" Sakura groaned, letting her forehead fall onto the stall counter. Kakashi smiled at her under his mask, making his eye curve in a gentle crescent. Personally he'd rather they be fined for public disturbance than chased down by hunter-nins.

"Probably not," he agreed cheerfully. "It's just part of their charm."

She thunked her forehead methodically against the counter.

...

Sex wasn't a foreign concept to Sasuke, but that didn't make it something he indulged in on a regular basis. If something didn't further his training or achieve the goal of a mission, then most likely Sasuke had never noticed its existence. Kabuto had once implicated childhood trauma during the formative years of his young, tender psyche as the root cause of his stunted libido; Sasuke's response had involved a Gokakyo no Jutsu and a laboratory full of expensive equipment.

"You're such a bastard, Sasuke."

And despite Kakashi's insinuation, he wasn't entirely inexperienced. Sex with Karin had been a mistake, of course, as it had only worsened her obsession with him instead of eliminating it. The one or two other Otonins he'd fucked had been in the name of strengthening discipline and his tolerance for pain. (Well, that and satisfying Orochimaru's creepy pedophilic voyeurism.) On the rare occasion that his adolescent hormones overpowered his strict self-control, he could take care of the problem in a quick, perfunctory manner before returning immediately to more important things, like training or breaking his emotional bonds.

"It's like something crawled up your ass and died in its own vomit or something."

Late at night when he found he couldn't brood on things like his clan's demise or murdering Itachi, he instead brooded once or twice over people's apparent inability to understand his lack of sexual interest. _Surely _a boy as pretty as he would be _inundated _with offers (and he had been, until said suitors realized that their comrades had a tendency to die horrible deaths and they backed off. It didn't need to be said that the idea had also crossed the snake-sannin's mind before Sasuke made his own opinion very clear on the matter).

The possibility that he could be gay wasn't entertained for more than a few bemused seconds, and not just because his father would throw an absolute _fit _in the afterlife. Since his family was dead anyway and the sight of naked men didn't do it for him any more than naked women, he'd dismissed it as a moot point.

"Were you _born_ that way—"

"Why are you still talking?" Sasuke demanded shortly, suppressing a wince as pain shot through his left arm. The rock he was sitting on wasn't making his body feel any better either, but he refused to sprawl out on the shredded and burnt grass like his more primitive sparring partner.

Naruto gave him a dirty look from his horizontal position, too tired to do much more. "You weren't _listening_," he spat, as though that should explain everything. It did, but Sasuke just curled his lip in reply. "I ain't gonna take that kind of shit from _Uchiha Sasuke_. Son of a bitch."

Sasuke tuned him out as he prodded carefully at his arm. It had been dislocated somewhere between the kage tower and the training grounds, and without further preamble he tensed his jaw and popped it back into place with a grunt.

"Oh, _gross_," Naruto cried, flinging a hand over his eyes. "You could have _asked_, you know. There's this thing called _help_."

Sasuke shot him a flat look as he rotated the arm slowly, categorizing the pain and distancing himself from it easily enough. (He was good at that sort of thing.) The Kyuubi's chakra healing Naruto's wounds made the air taste fiery-metallic at the back of Sasuke's throat. Like blood, he thought, and his slight smirk was dark and a little ironic.

"So now that we've gotten the ass-kicking out of the way—which I totally won, by the way—why _don't_ you ever do any of that stuff?"

"You didn't win." This was important to emphasize. "…Why don't I do what?"

"You know. _It_."

"It's called 'sex,' idiot."

"Yeah, yeah, smartass. So, why don't you?"

Sasuke raised a brow. "Why do you care so much?"

Naruto managed to shrug awkwardly, watching Sasuke fuss about on his rock. "Because a few people have wondered and it made _me_ wonder, and if anyone's gonna know it's gotta be _me_, because you're _my_ best friend. Rival. Friend. Thing." His forehead was creased in a familiar expression of confusion.

Sasuke's dark eyes stared back unblinkingly, unaware that it made him look like a serpent or a sinister villain. "I'm not something for you to own."

(Because it wasn't unusual for the blond orphan to be all possessive, but it was also one of the many things Sasuke had developed even less tolerance for after returning from Otogakure.)

"I know that, you bastard, not even _I'm _that stupid." '_Unlike Orochimaru'_ went unsaid. Sasuke's shoulders relaxed slightly.

"But it's just weird." Naruto rolled onto his stomach to prop himself up with his elbows, not noticing the leaves that stuck in his hair like an odd porcupine attached to his head. "If other guys had your looks—"

"It's boring."

Thrown, mouth working a few times, the blond finally managed, "Wait, what?"

Sasuke gave him a _look_ that would have made greater men piss their pants. Naruto didn't notice.

"You think sex is _boring_?" Naruto's voice rose high on the last word, obviously torn between laughing his ass off or drawing back in masculine horror. Sasuke shrugged his unharmed shoulder, then scowled when an idle thought pointed out that the blood was going to be a bitch to get out of his clothes. "Man, and here I thought Otonins would be all about the bondage and knives and shit."

Sasuke didn't respond and started rewinding the spools of wire used in their fight. Naruto could tell that Sasuke was silently willing the conversation to end, but the brunet was more relaxed than usual, was almost _talking_…and damn it, Naruto was going to milk that for all he was worth. He made a mental note to remember that a good hard fight with lethal objects turned Sasuke's prickliness into an almost satiated calm.

Sasuke, on the other hand, was preoccupied with the way Naruto's stare was making his skin feel itchy. It wasn't the same _'Gee, I wonder how I can use this poor broken ninja to my advantage_' kind of gaze that he was used to; it was more like _'Gee, he's a bastard but he's my buddy anyway_' and that just wasn't natural. Sasuke was a tool, an avenger, the last of his prestigious clan, et cetera—everything dark and angsty and most certainly _not _a fucking teddy bear.

"Ne, ne, you're not into all that, are you?"

The look Sasuke shot at him could have meant anything, really. "I didn't know you spent time wondering how Orochimaru might fuck someone," he muttered, making Naruto sputter and backpedal and decide he really didn't want to know.

"Maybe you just haven't found the right person."

This time Sasuke's look was the closest it had ever come to successfully wishing violent mental death on another person. "What the fuck is _that _supposed to mean?"

"Oi, I didn't mean a soulmate or whatever, don't get your panties in a twist." Naruto rolled his eyes, shifting slightly so that his right elbow wasn't digging into a small rock. "That kinda shit's for the trashy novels Sakura likes to pretend she doesn't read."

The reflexive tightening of long fingers around the spools told the blond that he'd better hurry up and get to the point. "I mean, if you don't have a partner that likes what you like, then it's not much fun for anyone, is it?"

"Who died and made you a counselor? Because you _suck_ at it, idiot."

Naruto frowned and stuck out his tongue. "Shut up, asshole. What, did you think I'd follow Ero-sannin around for three years and not learn _something_?"

"No, but it'd be too much to ask that you learn something useful," Sasuke commented dryly, making Naruto snort.

"Kicking your ass just now wasn't enough, bastard?"

"Figures you'd be too stupid to know it was _you _that should be thrown back to the Academy."

"Bastard! I'm the greatest ninja in Konoha!"

Sasuke listened to Naruto ranting and idly wondered why he hadn't gotten up and left yet. He felt less tightly wound than usual thanks to sparring with someone that, he hated to admit, was essentially his equal and constantly pushed his limits. Odd, considering that Orochimaru had been a sannin and yet Sasuke had always left the man's training feeling more confused and angry than ever. Maybe because Naruto wouldn't know deception if it died screaming in his face.

…Huh.

Sasuke tilted his head at Naruto, ignoring the yelling that had graduated into full-blown raving. The blond was physically average, somewhat attractive in that dorky charismatic way of his that had turned Gaara into a veritable ball of mushiness whenever he came to visit. The fact that Sasuke had come back to Konoha after killing both Orochimaru and Itachi was testament to the honest, stubborn loyalty that shone past the jinchuriki's idiocy.

Meanwhile, Naruto was getting weirded out with the Sasuke was silently looking _through _him. Of course the brunet never said much anyway, but even less so nowadays, and as a kid he'd never quite been able to achieve that perfect blank expression he was currently wearing. The old-fashioned black yukata with the clan uchiwa embroidered on the back made him look like an overgrown bat, and the overall effect was pretty damn creepy.

Naruto fidgeted for a few minutes under the serpentine stare before he finally cracked.

"Oi, quit it, bastard!"

Sasuke blinked slowly as he came out of his thoughtful trance. "…What now, idiot?"

Naruto pushed himself back onto his heels and scowled ferociously. "You're acting like you're not sure if you should eat the flesh off my bones with soy sauce or hot mustard."

Sasuke blinked again, wondering if he'd completely missed something.

"I mean, geez, it's not like I'm suggesting you go out and get fucked by some dominatrix with big tits—"

Sasuke's glare darkened.

"—but maybe if you could stop being such a frigid bitch and get laid, you wouldn't be half so anal all the time." A momentary awkward pause. "Uh, no pun intended, if that's what you like."

Sasuke could see Naruto subtly tensing his body, obviously prepared for a full frontal assault for being so…well, Naruto-ishly blunt on the matter. So he sadistically did nothing, amusing himself by watching the blond work himself into a sweat.

"Are you offering?" Sasuke said smoothly after a few minutes, his voice indifferent. It was funny to see Naruto at a loss for words (twice in the same day, a new record) but part of him was curious to see how the other boy would react.

"What—I—No! And stop _looking_ at me like that, bastard!"

Naruto was now standing, hands fisted at his side and blue eyes flashing with anger and something else that took a Sasuke a moment to figure out. It was _hurt_, as though they were genin again and he'd found a new way to make Naruto feel worthless.

…Huh, again. That was rather unexpected. The only things Naruto didn't turn into a joke were the things that actually mattered to him; and now that Sasuke had made that rather belated discovery, it created a whole new set of implications he'd probably end up losing sleep over. As if he didn't sleep little enough as it was.

With that inhuman speed of his Sasuke was suddenly in front of Naruto, mere centimeters away. Before the blond could yelp in surprise and pinwheel backwards, Sasuke held the back of the other's head and pressed their lips together.

Wide blue eyes stared into dark ones.

It wasn't much of a kiss, considering one participant was a bipolar traitor that hadn't been hugged since he was eight and the other was too shocked to be much of a participant at all. Naruto's lips were soft and dry, a little salty from sweat and their ramen lunch; not unpleasant, but not particularly mind-blowing either. Sasuke pulled back without releasing the hold he had on bright yellow hair, brow furrowed in thought. Naruto couldn't do much more than blink.

"…Hn." He absently picked the dry leaves from Naruto's hair, previously dislocated left arm hanging carefully still at his side, and turned things over in his head. Sasuke decided he still wasn't impressed and told Naruto so.

"I—well, shit, Sasuke…" The other boy sputtered before freezing. "Wait, did you just say I'm _boring_?"

"Yes," Sasuke said bluntly, flicking away a leaf between his fingers and turning to go back to the village. Apparently intimacy and sexuality in general was just as uninteresting as he'd believed, especially if not even Naruto could make it better. Besides, if he didn't treat the bloodstains in his yukata soon then they'd become permanent. "Idiot."

Before Sasuke could take more than a few steps, the brunet was tackled and pinned to the ground too quickly to fight back. The strength of Naruto's hand around his left arm sent pain shooting through his shoulder, but he kept his face impassive as he found himself straddled and faced with an angry jinchuriki.

"It's only _boring_," Naruto snarled, "when you're doing it _wrong_."

Sasuke frowned and started to argue, but was cut off by Naruto's mouth. Teeth bit roughly at his lips and a tongue lapped at his own while Naruto's weight and chakra held him firmly to the ground. Sasuke instinctively fought back. The pain in his shoulder and the angry forcefulness of the other boy made it feel not unlike another fight, albeit one with slightly different terms, and the unconscious activation of his Sharingan made the sensations more…intense. Or something. He'd never been good with words anyway.

Finally Naruto sat back on the ground at Sasuke's side and smirked foxily. "Ne, bastard…still boring?"

Sasuke forced his breathing and heartbeat to a more regular rhythm as he stared unseeingly up at the sky. He was very surprised to find that his body was reacting in ways his mind hadn't quite caught up with yet. Sex might not have been a foreign concept to Sasuke, but trust Naruto to twist everything Sasuke thought he knew into something entirely different. Not that he'd admit it except under the most extreme of tortures, of course, but the thought made him huff wryly.

Naruto waggled his brows suggestively. "So, does this mean I get to take the place of that stick shoved up your ass or what?"

And for the second time that day, a swift boot to the face sent him sprawling into the dirt.

"…You need more practice, idiot."

When Naruto started flailing about indignantly, Sasuke didn't bother to hide his amusement nor point out the fact that he hadn't said 'no'. That would take all the fun out of it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Word Count**: 3,487  
**Minor Revisions**: 9 May 2010

* * *

**Shoot Your Mouth Off**_**  
Hades' Phoenix**_

**2.**_**  
**_

Sex wasn't really a foreign concept to Naruto. That wasn't so surprising, considering he'd never had a guardian that cared whether or not he was starving, let alone restricting him to age-appropriate material. And with the casual regard that shinobi tended to have about sex, it was only natural that Naruto was able to develop his Sexy no Jutsu long before he ever hit puberty.

And really, expecting a teenage boy that could turn himself into a woman—a very sexy woman at that, with all the appropriate bits and sensations that came along with the position—to never get acquainted with his new self was like expecting Sasuke and Itachi to kiss and play house.

Any lingering innocence or vagueness he might have managed to retain about intimacy was soundly sacrificed during his training with Jiraiya like a virgin at the hands of a demon. _Icha Icha Paradise_ was still as boring as he'd thought it was when he was twelve, only now, it was because he'd _been_ there for Jiraiya's 'research' missions. Somehow, merely reading about getting a face full of bouncing beach ball-sized boobs just wasn't the same as the actual experience.

Now, Naruto warily watched Sasuke on the either side of the training grounds. Both were crouched, bleeding from various wounds and orifices and their muscles feeling like they'd been pounded with a meat tenderizer. He was rather smug to see the bastard favoring his right side, where he'd failed to block one of Naruto's powerful side-kicks and likely gotten a rib or three cracked.

"What's the matter, asshole, can't keep up?" Naruto jeered loudly, studiously ignoring the fact that yelling made his own lungs burn.

"Careful, idiot," Sasuke returned lowly. While normally he sounded about as emotive as a toaster, the adrenaline had lent him an air of unholy and anarchic glee. "Don't challenge people you _obviously_ can't beat."

Naruto growled, feeling fire in his blood and that peculiar shift in his vision that came with his pupils narrowing into foxy slits. With a loud war-cry underlined by the deeper roar of the Kyuubi, the blond threw the last of his energy into charging across the clearing to plant a fist in the bastard's face.

"Sasuke! Naruto! Where the hell are you?"

Sasuke's lips were twisted back into a snarl as he copied Naruto, forcing his legs to move as fast as they could, leaping into the air at the last possible second to avoid Naruto's earth-shattering punch and bringing his chokutō down point-first to pierce the other's heart. But Naruto turned with the blade, feeling it slice through his mesh shirt and graze his flesh as he caught Sasuke's arm and redirected his momentum.

Sasuke's breath hissed out when his back collided with the ground and was summarily swallowed by Naruto's mouth, which was suddenly pressed over his own and biting viciously at his lips. Reacting blindly, Sasuke's knee dislodged Naruto just enough for him to pull back and dig his teeth into the blond's shoulder until he tasted warmth and copper.

"Sasuke? _Naruto?_"

Outside stimulus slammed Naruto back to earth. He kicked himself away from Sasuke and somehow found his feet, wavering with sudden exhaustion that came from hard sparring for… He glanced at the sun. They'd been fighting since Sasuke had woken him up in the early hours of that morning with a surprise attack, and it was now nearly lunch.

"_What the fuck are you doing, you bastard?"_ Naruto had howled, clinging to the ceiling in his ratty cotton boxers and the weird sleeping cap that looked like something was gnawing away at his scalp. Sasuke stared up at him from the bed where he had pounced like a rabid cat, and was doing a damn good impression of one with the way his Sharingan eyes were unerringly focused on Naruto in the dark bedroom.

"_You're training to be an ANBU, moron,"_ he'd replied flatly, as though ambushing sleeping teammates at four in the morning was routine and Naruto was retarded for not understanding that. Naruto just gave him an incredulous look and demanded to see his release papers from the local mental hospital, which had sparked into their current fight.

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto blinked at the young woman. The shift from must-kill-Sasuke-now to oh-hey-pretty-girl was making his head feel a little lightheaded. Though that might've been the blood loss.

Sakura looked from Naruto to Sasuke and back again, mouth gaping wordlessly. Sasuke had moved to lean against his elbows but otherwise remained lying on the ground like some kind of fucked-up model. He was apparently unperturbed with his bloodied, scratched state and that his dark yukata had fallen off one pale shoulder in such a way that an outside observer—in this case, Sakura—might understandably come to the wrong conclusions.

Sasuke was well aware of this and didn't care. Naruto, of course, was completely oblivious.

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto tried again, reaching out to gently touch her shoulder. She twitched, found her self-control, and was suddenly dragging Naruto away from the training grounds.

"C'mon, you," she muttered. "We're going for ramen."

Had it been anyone else, this would have sent Naruto into 'paroxysms of delirious exuberance,' whatever that meant, but past experience told him that Sakura only ever bought him food when she wanted something from him.

He whimpered, and it wasn't just from the bruises that were beginning to ache.

…

"_Itadakimasu!_"

Naruto plowed his way through a sixth bowl, not having realized how hungry he was after a hard workout and no breakfast. Sakura poked at her own ramen, still on her first bowl, and waited with forced patience until Naruto had slowed down enough to speak in something resembling a normal human language.

"Naruto," she said suddenly in a quiet voice, "what's going on between you and Sasuke?"

Noodles were nearly forcibly ejected through the blond's nostrils. He coughed and gasped, "W-what?"

She gave him a hard look that promised pain in his very near future if he didn't talk. Swallowing his mouthful, he muttered, "Uh…I don't know."

His near future was looking rather grim indeed, judging from the way Sakura's gloves creaked when her fists tightened. Naruto quickly held up placating hands, not thinking that his head would be able to take much more abuse that day without some serious medical repercussions.

"Ne, ne, Sakura-chan, I ain't lying!" he babbled. "What do you mean, anyway? He's a bastard with his head up his ass and he deserves a fist down his throat, everyone knows that."

Sakura's stare was boring into him like power drill and Naruto was getting distinctly uncomfortable. One part of his mind was terrified that he was going to be eating the road behind them within the next few seconds, and another part was surreptitiously checking out the cleavage that Sakura had finally managed to develop. It was a good thing for his health that she was too distracted to notice.

"I saw you two…kissing."

"Eh?" he squawked in surprise. Naruto's eyes squinted as he thought back, dimly and belatedly realizing that he might've heard someone's yell while he and Sasuke were fighting. And he really _had_ kissed Sasuke, hadn't he? In the broadest, most general sense of the term, at least. Caught up in the need to see that son of bitch just _give up _for once, he hadn't really thought about what he was doing.

"Um, it was an accident?" he ventured, and squawked again when Sakura's fist thudded onto the counter. She was distinctly Not Amused, and the very small part of Naruto that had more sensitivity than a rock made its grand debut.

"Ne, Sakura-chan, you remember when Kiba said that Sasuke probably didn't have a cock and Shikamaru said that he just didn't have the time to act on his hormones, what with his whole 'I'm an Avenger' bullshit, and then Ino said that maybe he was gay or something and you tore a hole in the wall—"

Sakura's face said that not only did she remember that particular occasion, but that Naruto had better make his point _very quickly_.

"—and I said they'd better shut up if they didn't have the balls to ask him themselves?"

Sakura's anger swiftly deflated into incredulity. "Naruto, you actually _asked_ him?"

"Well, _yeah_. He's _my_ best friend. Er, rival." Naruto frowned thoughtfully.

"And you're still alive?"

"Hey, it takes more than an _Uchiha_ to bring down Uzumaki Naruto!" he cried, and secretly grinned when he saw a reluctant smile tugging at Sakura's expression.

"Well, what did he say?"

Naruto frowned at her. There was a certain measure of breathlessness in her voice, though she'd claimed to have gotten over the worst bit of her crush. And although Naruto would do anything for her—she was one of the two most special of his Special People, after all—Sasuke was too, and he didn't want to break Sasuke's confidence. Then again, Sasuke generally couldn't care less what people thought of him, and this _was_ Sakura, who'd been the only other person that never gave up on that asshole.

"He said sex was _boring_." The thought boggled Naruto's mind. He'd been intimate with a few women in his travels with Jiraiya, and for a kid that grew up without much healthy physical contact, there was something awe-inspiring at the thought that _his_ touch could bring pleasure to another person. He'd taken it as a personal challenge.

(What he didn't know was that one or two of the women had later told his sensei that they'd never known a customer to be so generous and eager to learn in bed. Like a puppy, they said with teasing smiles)

"…That's it?"

Naruto leaned alongside the ramen counter to peer closely at her face. "Ne, I said something about bondage but he was all 'meh' about it, and then he insulted me. Then he kissed me and said I was boring, too, and tried to walk away."

"Then what?" There was something inscrutable in her features, and although she and Naruto had gotten close over the years and knew each other damn well, he wasn't sure what it was. But he wasn't in the habit of lying to her anyway.

"I grabbed him and kissed him, and then he kicked me in the face. And I beat the shit outta him for being such a bastard."

Sakura stared at him for a moment longer until he seriously wondered if he should've written a last will and testament before agreeing to lunch. Not that she'd given him much opportunity to refuse. Then she slowly started to smile, and before Naruto really knew what was happening she started laughing .

"Uh, Sakura-chan?" Maybe he should get her sanitarium-release-papers as well.

Her head fell onto his shoulder as she got herself under control again. "Naruto, never change," she said through her giggles and his dirt-streaked orange jacket.

"Um. Okay?"

Since she wasn't glaring or sulking or cackling, Naruto felt safe enough to finish that sixth ramen bowl. It was lukewarm now, but that was all right, because Sakura was a warm and familiar weight against his shoulder. The moment would've been complete if there'd been a dark and brooding presence on his other side, scowling into a lame-ass cup of tea, but he still smiled against the rim of the bowl and thanked the gods that there were people like Sakura in his life.

"So, what kind of kisser is he?" she said suddenly.

"Oi, Sakura-chan!"

…

Naruto had done a lot of spying in his three years of training. Mostly of the perverted kind, because Jiraiya said there was no enemy like a humiliated woman. Jiraiya had given him a healthy respect for young, wet, and curvy nubile bodies, while others like Sakura, Tenten, Sakura, Hinata, Tsunade, and especially Sakura had reminded him that having those curves could be just as dangerous as his Rasengan.

But Naruto had never tried to put those hard-won spying skills to use on _guys_. The mere _thought _of Kiba, his brother in a shared love for fart jokes and offending the girls with their sheer male idiocy, in _any _state of non-medical-examination undress made Naruto throw up a little in his mouth. Or Lee and Shino and the rest, for that matter, although Neji looked enough like a girl that a drunken Naruto had nearly smothered him, thinking he was Hinata. The blond nearly lost his use of chakra and an eyeball in return.

The point was that Naruto had never tried spying on other guys before, and there he was, trying to do that very thing on someone as lethal, and bloodthirsty, and unstable as Sasuke.

(Perhaps there was a reason he never seemed to beat Shikamaru at _Go_.)

Except for his face, Sasuke didn't look much like a girl. His hips were too narrow and his shoulders too wide for that, and although his fingers were long and thin, his palms were too large to be very feminine. He was graceful, but then, most shinobi were trained to be anyway, even Naruto; and his self-control smacked faintly of that aristocratic stuffiness Neji and even Hinata had. The distinct lack of boobs and the slightly different distribution of muscle and body proportions were obvious.

A woman he wasn't, and with a personality crossed from a rock and a mental patient, but he was still nice to look at. Especially wet.

There was some shadow on the bathroom ceiling that Naruto took advantage of to peer over the top of the shower curtain, although the shower steam was making him sweat uncomfortably. Sasuke didn't look like girl – except for his face, which Naruto _always _made sure to remind him about – but his pale skin was as lickable as a chick's in an onsen.

Huh. Well, whatever, it wasn't like Naruto was gay. It was just _Sasuke_, that asshole, so whatever.

One of those long-fingered hands twisted the shower handle, making the bathroom go quiet. Sasuke squeezed the excess water from his hair.

Then instinct kicked in and Naruto dropped to the floor on all fours, avoiding the shuriken that thudded into the ceiling where he'd been hiding. He jumped backwards awkwardly, slightly off balance, to avoid the kunai that tried to slash across his throat.

"Oi, oi, bastard, what kind of paranoid asshole takes his weapons into the shower?" Naruto cried from the floor of the doorway. Sasuke stood dripping on the mat, kunai in hand and as unashamedly naked as the day as he was born. He raised a slender brow, as though to point out that Naruto _had _been trespassing in his apartment, so it wasn't actually paranoia.

"Oh, shut up," Naruto muttered. He finally straightened from his defensive crouch, but kept a wary eye on the apparently innocent kunai. "You're getting slow, bastard. I coulda killed you, like, seventeen gazillion times before you noticed me."

"I knew you were there," Sasuke told him. "I was waiting."

Naruto knew he meant 'waiting for you to make a move,' but he said anyway, "Oh, Sasuke-chan, how _kinky_."

Sasuke frowned, though it was more because of the added suffix to his name than anything else, and expertly flicked the kunai. It bit point-first into the doorjamb when Naruto pulled his head back just in time. "Shut up, idiot."

"You've got some serious social issues, bastard," Naruto muttered, eyeing the kunai sticking out centimeters away from his right eye. "And put some clothes on, geez."

"Why should I?"

"Because you're wet, naked, and making me imagine things that you would kill me for. Put some fucking clothes on."

"No." Sasuke crossed his arms for extra emphasis, eyes narrowed challengingly.

"You look like a pissed-off cat that got stuck in the bathtub."

"Better than being beaten with the ugly stick."

"Hey! Bastard!"

His brow rose again, this time in smug victory. Naruto all but howled and threw himself at Sasuke, who cursed violently when the blond's hands slipped off his water-slick skin and sent them both tumbling off balance. The shower curtain was ripped from the wall under Sasuke's flailing limbs, and they tumbled into a struggling heap of aggravation and boringly white plastic.

"You know, we've really gotta stop meeting like this."

Naruto's voice was muffled. He was sprawled over the other boy with his face stuck uncomfortably in Sasuke's neck and their legs tangled awkwardly.

"Get off me."

Sasuke sounded disturbingly calm, all things considered, which meant he'd flown straight past irritation and smacked headlong into fury. Naruto considered this, then promptly ignored the command completely.

"You should seriously get one of those 'Slippery When Wet' signs tattooed on your ass."

"Get. Off."

"You sure?" Naruto grinned into the skin he was pressed against and gave it a languorous lick.

Sasuke twitched.

"Do that again and I'll slice it off."

The blond didn't know if 'it' constituted his tongue or his dick, but he got the idea. None too delicately extricating himself from Sasuke and the shower curtain, he sat back on Sasuke's thighs and didn't try too hard in keeping his eyes from wandering.

"You know, asshole, if you really meant that, you would've just _done_ it."

Sasuke blinked up at him, once, the only sign of his surprise. If Sasuke had truly wanted him to stop, Naruto would have already been eating plaster. Pfff, and people thought the guy was hard to read.

Leaning down, Naruto braced himself with his hands on either side of Sasuke's head and paused with his lips a short breath from the other's. Sasuke was holding himself very still, muscles tense, in the way he did when waiting for Naruto's guard to drop.

"Ne," Naruto murmured, feeling the warmth of his own breath reflected back upon his own skin, "you aren't gonna try and rip my balls off, are you?"

This was a very important question, because Sasuke was lying between Naruto's legs and he was notorious for taking advantage of the slightest opportunities. The overhead fixture cast enough light to soften Sasuke's eyes into a more neutral grey. "So long as you keep it interesting," he replied evenly, "no."

Insert that insufferably challenging look.

Somehow managing to suppress the instinctive response to punch the bastard in the face, Naruto eyed him carefully. They were still nose-to-nose but they didn't touch; only genins and fools went into a battle without knowing the terms. It wasn't like Naruto was a stranger to casual sex or that he was in love with Sasuke, but fuck, this was _Sasuke_, who didn't do things by halves. No, he did things in leaps and bounds, just like Naruto but more cautiously, and Naruto wasn't going to let Sasuke treat him like one of those nameless canon-fodder Otonins.

Then again, since when had he and Sasuke ever decided on terms? If they couldn't decide whether they were friends-that-hated-one-another or enemies-that-loved-each-other, well, that wasn't anything new. And maybe it was better that way, because one couldn't play a false role if one didn't even know the proper script.

Naruto was good at bullshitting his way forward.

Finally, Naruto kissed Sasuke. It wasn't their first kiss, and there still weren't any fireworks or pithy violins, but Sasuke's lips were soft and warm from his shower, tasting like fresh water and…Sasuke. Nor was it like kissing a girl, because he refused to let Naruto lead anything for very long, and when the blond ran his tongue across those lips and pulled out a quiet moan, Sasuke found a new way to steal back control with clever thin fingers.

Having his friend-rival-lover lying nude underneath him appealed to a large part of Naruto's masculine pride, and he unashamedly ground his hips downwards. As if sensing the smugness, Sasuke's hands tightened around his shoulders and suddenly it was Naruto blinking, dazed, up at the ceiling. The ugly shower curtain crinkled under his head when he shifted.

"Bastard," he growled, and Sasuke just smirked. The brunet didn't want to waste his time fucking a sycophant or an enemy, didn't want to waste his time on someone too forgiving or too passive or too ignorant; but Naruto twisted him over this time, and then no one knew whose leg belonged to whom or who was winning, but there were better things to think about for a little while.

"This is totally better than ramen," Naruto said. Then he squawked, again, as a hand tightened a little too far on certain sensitive parts, but it was worth it when it made Sasuke huff under his breath in a sort of half-laugh. Maybe it wasn't _always_ so boring.

And maybe Naruto needn't worry so much about the whole friends-or-rivals thing, because it was more interesting when you could beat the shit out of your best friend and then make it better with hot, sweaty, bruising monkey sex.


End file.
